If one knows nothing of art except for one style, that style is likely to be Impressionism. Even if, for some reason known only to yourself, you have never entered a museum in the whole course of your life, you have no doubt seen dozens of Impressionist works reproduced on calendars, refrigerator magnets, T-shirts and key chains. People who don't particularly like art like Impressionism because it is pretty and - at least in many respects - intellectually simple. Because of all of these points, anyone who wishes to consider himself or herself a sophisticate in the ways of the artworld might well feel inclined to turn up the nose at Impressionism for something more obscure, a style that requires a far more rarefied taste.
But when one sees one of the finest pieces of Impressionist painting, any intention that one might have had of decrying it as "pretty enough" or "rather plebian" will find the words sticking in the craw. Claude Monet's "Water Lilies" (c.1919-26, oil on canvas, in the collection of the St. Louis Museum of Art) is one of these masterpieces not only of Impressionism but of post-Renaissance art (Weekes 41). Although this is one the central panel of a triptych - and the effect of the panels when they are united is even more dramatic - even the single panel is (although one shudders to use such a clichTd term) breathtaking.
In this painting, as was true throughout his career and especially in his last series, Monet is fascinated by the transient effects of natural light on simple objects. To some extent he manages to capture a subtler sense of time passing within each canvas: This painting of the water lilies seems to shimmer as if we were watching it in real time as cirrus clouds skim by on high overhead winds and lightly fleck the water. But Monet also studied - and captured - the effects of light moving from one moment to the next in his long sequences of paintings. As we look at this canvas of water lilies and com...